Thursday 17 November 2016

November Means the Bad Sex in Fiction Shortlist...

Around this time in November the shortlist for the Bad Sex in Fiction Award is announced.

The Award  was established by Auberon Waugh, the then editor of the Literary Review, and literary critic Rhoda Koenig.

It has been awarded every year since 1993.

"the Bad Sex in Fiction Award has honoured an author who has produced an outstandingly bad scene of sexual description in an otherwise good novel. The purpose of the prize is to draw attention to poorly written, perfunctory or redundant passages of sexual description in modern fiction."
Literary Review

When you consider how many books are produced, it's going to be the mainstream published type that will get the most notice, and readers who think these books deserved nominating...

You can read about a few of the nominated authors who escaped the shortlist in this Guardian article about this year's list.

(The new US President Elect was nominated apparently, but was excluded because it wasn't fiction...)

So this year's contenders:

A Doubter's Almanac by Ethan Canin

The Tobacconist by Robert Seethaler

Men Like Air by Tom Connolly

The Butcher's Hook by Janet Ellis

Leave Me by Gayle Forman

The Day Before Happiness by Erri De Luca


Having read the entries for this year, I can't see why Gayle Forman was included...

Whoever wins will likely see a rise in sales following the announcement on the 30th November.

Of the candidates this year, it has to be Erri De Luca's The Day Before Happiness. But Janet Ellis does deserve a commendation for The Butcher's Hook...


Which will win?




























image courtesy of       & freedigitalphotos.net







Monday 14 November 2016

Spam is doing the Rounds...

I've been so busy this past week that I haven't had time to check into my blog until today.

Unfortunately some potentially offensive spam was able to be posted on the comments on one of my more recent October posts. :(

If anyone was offended, please accept my apologies...

Sadly the spammers found a way around Blogger's system for detecting spam postings, so they appeared in the visible comments.

It does mean I'll be altering my settings on past posts to avoid any more incidents like this; so if you do comment on an older post I'll review them and then be able to confirm it's okay and allow it to be published.

I don't want to have to review every comment first, so I hope Blogger will quickly pick up these spammers posts.



An evening view...